Marketplace: College for all

Daphne Koller: Two years ago she co-founded Coursera, which now has 8.3 million users enrolled in 673 courses.
(photo credit:COURTESY COURSERA)

“College,” Humorist Mark Twain is alleged to have remarked, “is a place where a professor’s lecture notes go straight to the students’ lecture notes, without passing through the brains of either.” As a 47-year veteran of college teaching, I find this quip painfully accurate, even if humorist Twain, himself, did not really say it.Almost every university teaches innovation, especially those with business schools. Yet, very few actually practice it. In Harvard Yard there is a statue of John Harvard, the clergyman whose deathbed bequest in 1638 established the university named after him.